


What it is to be happy

by Shaish



Series: Ghosts [8]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Brief experimental threesome, Cats, Humor, M/M, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-08
Updated: 2014-10-08
Packaged: 2018-02-20 09:23:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2423546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shaish/pseuds/Shaish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Gina's really busy so I just looked over this myself. Sorry if there's any ridiculous mistakes fjdksl.</p>
    </blockquote>





	What it is to be happy

**Author's Note:**

> Gina's really busy so I just looked over this myself. Sorry if there's any ridiculous mistakes fjdksl.

She sways her hips like a pendulum, back and forth, to and fro until she’s almost pressed up right next to Steve where they’re both sitting at the bar. She’s been watching them all night, especially Steve, and Bucky’s been watching _her_.

“Hey,” she parts her red lips, runs a slow tongue across the lower one in a light swipe, “My name’s Lucielle.” Bucky wonders if the color reminds Steve of Peggy like it does him.

Steve doesn’t say anything, but that doesn’t seem to deter her. If anything, it just makes her try harder.

Bucky takes a swallow from his tumbler that doesn’t burn anymore when it goes down, right forearm resting on the bar, gloves glossy under the golden lights and shadow play.

“We could get out of here,” he hears her say, lower, almost conspiratorial, voice like tinkling glass on hollow wood. It sounds a little too sweet for the hard alcohol Bucky’s drinking and Steve’s nursed beer, still held at the base in a hand resting on the bar, condensation pooling on the wood, on his bare fingers.

Steve still doesn’t say anything and she leans in, enough that Bucky can’t see her face beyond the side of Steve’s head anymore, but he can still hear her, as well as the heavier steps coming towards them from his back right.

“ _We could have a good time_ ,” she says, hushed and soft and curving at the edges with her smile, curves supple where he can see them around Steve’s back where she’s bent to get in close to Steve’s ear, temptation in stilettos.

Bucky leans back in his stool a little to get a better look like the seven other men he counts out of the corner of his eyes around the room.

She’s dressed to kill, all long legs and miles of tanned skin, dark hair and a shocking red top. She’s a red hibiscus, a spider lily, and her date has been ignoring her all night.

The heavier steps stop a couple feet away from Steve’s back, shoulders of the man as broad as Steve’s and muscles wider, but Bucky knows he’ll fold like a house of cards once they actually get started.

“You makin’ a move on my girl?” the man asks, all deep tones and guttural delivery, hair closely shaved to his head.

But Steve still doesn’t talk, and Bucky knows he most likely won’t, so Bucky says, “Who wouldn’t? You been ignorin’ that beauty of a dame _all night_.”

The man’s head snaps over in his direction, eyes darker and fists clenching. “ _What’d you say?_ ” he asks, testerone practically steaming out of his nostrils like a bull.

“Exactly what she’s been anglin’ my _friend_ to say,” Bucky says, and doesn’t try to avoid the fist that’s aimed at his face, doesn’t move because he was going to let the guy hit him. The bruise would heal in no time and everyone would be square. But.

The fist stops a foot from his face and the girl backs up quickly as Steve turns towards him, abandoning his beer. He sends Bucky a _look_ , and Bucky lifts his eyebrows briefly, a little helplessly.

It _would_ have worked.

The guy tries to pull his hand back with little success and that’s about the time the bartender yells, “ _Take it outside!_ ”

\--

“ _This_ time if something happens, just let them hit me,” Bucky says as they near the bar. Steve raises an eyebrow at him.

“Like the _last_ _time_ you wanted me to?” he asks, stepping over a discarded soda can. Bucky huffs a breath.

“It would’ve gone more smoothly if you had just let the guy hit me in the first place,” he reasons, “Then we wouldn’t’a had to send the guy packin' to the hospital and leave his dame traumatized. Not that I’m complaining about that first part,” he adds when Steve gives him another look, “Just bad luck he ignored her and that dame wanted to be noticed.”

“You know I won’t do that,” Steve says, quiet, serious. Bucky looks over at him. “And clearly my looks had nothing to do with it,” Steve adds sarcastically, lightening the mood again.

Bucky grins, slow and lascivious. “Oh, your looks _definitely_ had something to do with it,” he says, “If I was her, I’d want in your pants too.”

Steve snorts. “Are you saying you don’t want in them anymore?” Steve asks, teasing, “Because I _was_ thinking about getting them off when we got back, but if you don’t want to-”

Bucky grabs onto his arm and winds around it like a snake. “ _Steve_ ,” he says emphatically, “Don’t even joke about that.” He grips on tighter, lowering his voice seductively and closing his eyelids halfway, switching to Russian. “ _Sometimes, **all I** **want** is to crawl inside you and **never come out**_ **.** ”

He feels the shudder roll through Steve and travel up both of his arms, past his ribcage, the metal of his left picking up the vibrations where they almost completely fade out where metal meets skin meets muscle meets bone.

Steve looks back to him, eyes darker and serious again, blue barely visible when they pass under the streetlights.

Bucky said it like an exaggeration, a joke, but they both know the truth of it.

How some days they don’t even get out of bed, because there’s nothing else the world has to offer that either of them really wants. Because there’s nothing else that matters, and they can forget the fucked up world and let the only thing that _does_ matter be their breaths on each other’s faces, the soft and loud sounds they make when they move together, barely held back by teeth and lips or trapped in their throats and chests, only let out into the small spaces between them. Lose themselves in each other.

Of over warmed skin on over warmed skin, of blue and blue-gray eyes and ice and fire and shadows and passion and pain. Of sliding and friction and resting heartbeats.

Of a black cat sleeping on a shield or on a windowsill in the afternoon streaks of the sun, watching them lazily and coming and going as it pleases.

Of books and the occasional tv show that’s always half fuzzy.

Their life now (and not _lives_ , because they’ll never live apart again).

Steve opens the door for him at the bar, and Bucky lets go of him to walk inside, giving Steve a flirty wink on his way in.

But Steve stays close, a furnace at his back and steps almost at his heels, following him like he’s always followed Steve, round and round they go.

\--

“He’s been watching you,” Bucky says quietly, half an hour later where they’re sat at a table in a back corner of the bar. He takes a sip of his drink while Steve stiffens for the smallest moment before casually turning his head and looking towards the other end of the bar out of the corner of his eye.

There’s a man sat with a few people at a table on the opposite side of the room, golden brown eyes on Steve and lips wrapped around the glass top of a beer bottle as he takes a swallow, long, tanned line of his exposed throat almost edged in a soft glow under the golden lights of the bar.

And Bucky knows. It’s not like Steve _hasn’t_ noticed the eyes on him, on both of them, it’d be impossible for him _not_ to. But, even with all of the pain and violence and sex they have, Steve still doesn’t seem to fully understand just how damn _gorgeous_ he is. That someone who isn’t Bucky, or Peggy, would be staring at him with want, and not because he was _Captain America_ or got blood on his face while ripping someone’s throat out and forgot to wipe it off.

“He wants you,” Bucky says, voice low.

Steve looks back to him.

Bucky cocks his head slightly. “Do you want him? _I_ kind of want him.”

Steve watches him for a moment, glancing back towards the other table briefly before taking a sip of his drink, eyes on the table top. “I just want you, Buck,” he says softly, quietly, and Bucky presses the ends of their boots together underneath the table. “You can have him, if you want,” Steve says after another moment, eyes darting up to Bucky’s.

Bucky glances back up to the other table for a moment, shifting his bangs a little and locking eyes with the guy.

He’s gorgeous, too. Not like Steve, no one’s like Steve, but his hair is dark brown, a darker shade than even Bucky’s, and it contrasts nicely with his brown, almost gold eyes set into his tanned skin. He’s like a desert, and that makes him all the more attractive for all that Bucky and Steve are frozen winter.

Bucky runs his tongue over his lower lip, testing, and can see the guy’s eyes tracking the movement from here.

“Maybe,” he concedes quietly, shifting his eyes back to Steve, “You wanna watch?”

Steve’s cheeks go a little pink under the lights, but he tilts his head slightly like he hadn’t considered it.

He probably hasn’t.

\--

Bucky pushes in with a groan and gets one in return that’s half muffled by sheets, jacket hanging loose around his arms and lower back and jeans down a little around his hips, gloved fingers digging into the bar guy’s hips where he’s on his elbows and knees on the bed.

He’s tight, and his voice isn’t the same pitch as Steve’s. His hair is darker, so much darker than Steve’s, too, and he doesn’t move like Steve at all when Bucky rocks into him, muscles clenching at different intervals.

Bucky _loves it_.

He spreads the guy’s legs a little further apart with his own where he’s kneeling behind him on the bed, bringing up his right hand to pull his glove off with his teeth and run his pale skin over warm, tanned curves, letting the glove drop to the bed. The guy spreads his legs a little further, arching his back into the touch, then a bit more as Bucky pulls almost all the way out before thrusting back in.

It gets him a loud moan and warm, clenched heat, and Bucky’s eyes flutter closed for a brief moment. He can feel Steve watching where he’s leaning against the wall at his back left, arms probably still crossed comfortably over his chest. The prickling of his gaze slides slow as molasses up and down Bucky’s back, across his arms, where his pants are pushed down, and it makes Bucky thrust in again, harder, snapping his hips faster while biting his lower lip.

He turns his head towards Steve when he feels his orgasm building, tilts his head back a little in invitation, hair cascading from his ponytail down over his slack coat.

Steve uncrosses his arms as he pushes off of the wall and walks over, and stops behind Bucky.

Bucky feels Steve’s left hand slide down into his left pant leg, dragging his pants down a bit with it before digging his blunt fingernails in and dragging them up while his right hand circles around Bucky’s other side and massages the base of his cock, Steve grinding his own against Bucky’s lower back, and Bucky can feel how hard he is even through their layers of clothes.

Steve switches hands, trades his right around Bucky’s cock for his left, and grabs Bucky’s ponytail while his left massages the base as Bucky thrusts, tugging Bucky’s head back sharply with it and leaning down to bite at his exposed throat. Bucky bites his lower lip, running his tongue over it slowly in counterpoint to his snapping hips, reaching forward and around as much as he can to grab the guy’s cock and start stroking it with his ungloved hand.

And when Bucky comes a few seconds later, it’s with his eyes on Steve’s, another guys moans mixing with Steve’s breaths in his ears, and Steve’s mouth on his, tongue roving over his teeth, tongue, and anywhere Steve can reach with his own inside. Bucky presses their tongues together, letting out an obscene moan as he pulls his cock out, stroking the guy until he comes with a shout, keeping dark eyes on Steve’s when Steve pulls back, Steve’s own blue almost completely black in the dark room.

Bucky pulls the condom off and they leave the man a sleeping pile on the bed, and they only get halfway back to where they’re currently staying before Steve’s dragging him into the closest alley and kneeling in front of him, pants back down around Bucky’s hips while Steve sucks his cock, already hard again. He holds Bucky’s hips tight to the side of the building and Bucky presses his shoulders and head back against the damp cement wall as his back arches in a painful bow.

He buries his fingers in blonde hair and tugs, and it gets him a familiar moan in a familiar pitch and that something that always claws at his insides, always trying to get to Steve, tries to press to the surface.

And he lets it, leaving claw marks on the side of Steve’s neck.

\--

“I want them,” Bucky says three days later, staring at the clothes in the shop’s display window.

They’re in France now (again), and it’s overcast, which means Steve’s eyes stand out even more, even in a window reflection with Shadow perched on his shoulders.

Steve’s reflection shifts next to his, just slightly, Shadow’s tail curled loosely around the front of his neck. He holds a hand out towards Bucky and Bucky looks over. “Then let’s get them,” he says simply.

Bucky takes his hand and grins.

\--

“They’re tighter than I thought,” Bucky says ten minutes later, old combat pants folded and in a red bag on his arm ( _Red_. He’d raised an eyebrow at that and Steve had just shaken his head, because _of course it’s fucking red_ ).

“But they do make your ass look great,” Steve replies casually, giving him a small smirk when Bucky looks over.

Bucky stands a little taller and walks ahead, swaying his hips a little exaggeratedly in his brand new ‘skinny jeans’. Steve laughs, and it’s always a beautiful sound, even when it’s not (but that is not right now, and anyway, Bucky always absorbs it like a flower absorbs sunlight).

They stop in front of another display window on the way to the grocery store, eight tvs all playing the same footage in French:

“ _...-Falcon, a new member of the Avengers team. He spoke with us earlier in the week about his mechanical wings, built by Tony Stark, also known as Iron Man_ -”

Bucky watches Steve’s face go as blank as his own in the window’s reflection and holds out a hand. Steve looks down at it for all of three seconds before taking it and letting Bucky lead him away.

Two blocks down, Steve lets go of his hand to slide it into Bucky’s far back jean pocket, squeezing his ass once. When Bucky looks over, Steve’s wearing a small grin, like he’s sixteen again and getting away with something he didn’t think he’d ever be able to.

Bucky grins back, slow, and loops his right arm around Steve’s waist, pulling him close and letting memories lie.

\--

“Hey, Buck,” Steve says the next morning, staring up and counting the cracks in the ceiling with him.

Bucky hums a question, right hand resting on his stomach and right leg tangled with Steve’s left in the sheets.

“Let’s go to a baseball game,” Steve says, and Bucky turns his head to look at him, eyes a little wide.

Steve turns his head after a moment to look back, waiting.

Bucky gives him a slow grin.

Steve grins back like he’s twelve, and it’s one of the few times that they both feel like they could be again.

\--

They don’t know either of the teams playing, but they both end up getting behind one and Bucky curses in French, Russian, _and_  some Italian when they lose, Shadow curled down in the small gap between his right boot and Steve’s left. Steve tightens his left arm around his waist and offers his popcorn in commiseration.

Bucky ends up eating it all, but on the way back they’ve both got small smiles on their face, and Bucky even gets Steve to chase him like they’re five a block away from their new apartment.

(Bucky’s still faster, even when they’re making themselves go _slower_. Steve says he’s _still_ cheating and Bucky just grins).

\--

He lets his eyes go unfocused at the feel of the fingers pulling up his hair, collecting the length of it in a ponytail at the back of his head, somewhere between the top and the middle. Steve’s careful but efficient, only stumbling now and then. “You know what you’re doin’ back there?” Bucky asks, voice lazy and drowsy even to his own ears.

“Mmhmm,” Steve replies, pulling up the last of the few rebellious strands with what Bucky’s sure is a concentrated frown on his face, “I looked it up online.”

Bucky snorts, eyes tracking a dog chasing a neon green tennis ball across the other side of the park, two kids, roughly five and seven, chasing after it as fast as they can with their short little legs. It’s a rare, sunny day today.

“What did we get told about ‘readin’ things online’?” Bucky mock scolds, and his lips pull up when Steve gives his collected hair a gentle tug.

“It was a tutorial video,” Steve defends, Bucky feeling his hands shift behind his head, “Not a Wikipedia article.”

“Mmhmm,” Bucky mimics, throwing a sarcastic tone into the mix. Steve tugs at his hair again before Bucky hears elastic and feels the shifting of his hair, left, then right, then left again, strands brushing the back of his neck with a few _swoosh_ es.

“There,” Steve announces after a few moments, “Done.”

Bucky pulls his burner phone out of his pocket to take a look at his reflection in the darkened screen, turning his head this way and that, up and then down. “You remember that _Mary Poppins_ movie we watched?” he asks, but there’s no point in asking, because of course Steve remembers. But, sometimes, it’s nice to pretend that some part of them isn’t engineered to be the perfect soldier.

Steve hums in agreement, like Bucky knew he would, and Bucky can hear his smile in it.

“I rock the bun so much better,” Bucky says, tucking his phone away.

Steve laughs quietly, disturbing Shadow who’s curled up next to his leg, and tugs at Bucky a few moments later. Bucky goes willingly, laying back in the grass with Steve and staring up at the sky filtered through the bright leaves overhead of the tree they’re lying next to, black fur briefly popping into view and shifting above their heads as Shadow finds a new spot and gets comfortable.

“I think I see your arm up there,” Steve says. Bucky looks over to see he’s all wide eyed innocence, blue eyes glancing over at him and brighter in the day. Bucky raises an unimpressed eyebrow, and Steve’s lips twitch.

Bucky looks back up at the sky. “I think I see that back alley fight you started in ‘ _29_ -”

Steve makes an indignant noise, giving Bucky’s arm a shove and looking back up at what they can just barely see of the sky through the leaves. “It wasn’t me,” Steve protests, “It was Ed Harington.”

“You’re still sticking to that story?” Bucky asks, grinning now, “We _both know_ it was you. All for the sake of Amanda Walker’s skirt ends.”

“He pushed her into the mud, Buck,” Steve says, mock defensively (mostly).

Bucky grins, “Yeah. But then we _all_ ended up in the mud that day.”

Steve makes a small sound, and when Bucky looks over, Steve’s laughing quietly at the sky.

“ _Mister! Ball!_ -” they hear in French, and Bucky reaches up with his right hand, staying down on the grass, catching the thing aimed for them without looking.

He holds onto it for a moment, glancing at the grass stained bright blue and white patterns on the ball before lobbing it back, looking back up at the sky.

“ _Thank you!_ ” they hear a moment later, quickly followed by the sound of laughter and quick, light footsteps chasing one another away.

It’s quiet for a minute, both still staring up at the clouds overhead, squinting against the sun when it streams through. Steve takes a breath, but doesn’t speak. So Bucky says, “Steve. Did you ever-”

“No,” Steve cuts him off, and Bucky snaps his mouth shut, biting his tongue for a moment while he waits. He hears Steve shift slightly and then let out a quiet breath. “Yes,” he says amends, quieter, “Once or twice, during that year with you and the Commandos. But I never...It wasn’t a priority, and I was...so caught _up_ in her that-” Steve cuts himself off and Bucky hears him swallow.

He wants to reach out, grab his hand, but keeps himself where he is, remains still and tries to wait. It’s the least he can do.

“I was so caught up in just...being _around_ Peggy and the possibility of _being_ with her that I didn’t...I didn’t really think too much about having kids,” Steve says quietly after a moment. Bucky keeps his eyes on the sky. “And then we fell and- I can’t. Now.” Bucky finally turns on his side to look at Steve, and Steve takes a moment before shifting to do the same, eyes down but facing Bucky.

“Yeah,” Bucky says quietly, right hand resting under his head, “I kind of figured you and she would...I don’t know, do the whole _thing_.” He lets out a breath, reaching up with his left hand to briefly slide his fingers over the end of Shadow’s tail where its curled above their heads. He glances up and gets golden eyes and a gentle flick from the end of said tail for it. He looks back to Steve, who’s looking at him now. “I thought you’d get married, get the house,” he says, “After doing crazy ass missions for at least another few years, have kids. I’d be the best man at your wedding, if I lived through the war, if the war ended, and I’d wave you off as you and she drove into the sunset.”

Steve frowns after a moment. “What about you?”

Bucky’s brow furrows before his expression clears. He huffs a laugh that’s more breath than sound, and shakes his head.

“I don’t know,” he admits, brushing his gloved left hand through the grass between them, watching the green flicker against the black. “Maybe I’d meet a dame some day, maybe not. Maybe I’d end up like my pa and- and be a drunkard who couldn’t face the day without a bottle in my hand. All the things we saw? If it wasn’t a dame pulling me out, I knew it’d be a drink pulling me down.”

Steve reaches forward with his right hand to still Bucky’s left, pillowing his own left under his head and mirroring Bucky. Steve laces their fingers together and Bucky grips Steve’s fingers with his, eyes on them. “You know I’d never leave you alone, Buck,” Steve says, quiet, gentle, almost sounding exactly like he used to in 1943. And it hurts to hear it, but it also softens the ache of a wound that comes from the same time period, which is almost a blessing. “I’d have dragged you with me and Peggy. You’d have lived next door, across the street, as close as we could get you, and you would’a been ‘Uncle Bucky’, mark my words.”

Bucky huffs another laugh, old and honest and only a little hard. It’s miracle, considering how hard he’d become that year with Steve and the Commandos, the year before it. He’d managed around Steve, around the guys, but that was a different kind of soft from him, one that wasn’t entirely made of what it used to be before he shipped out. He hadn’t been the _Bucky_ that left Steve after the expo since he entered combat, still hadn’t been after Steve rescued him and hundreds of other guys from that Hydra base, then followed Steve back into Hell.

And now, now he’s all of those Bucky’s he used to be, and none of them at all. Just like Steve.

He grips Steve’s fingers tighter.

“Stubborn ass,” he says, soft and fond, looking back at Steve, “You’d never let me just drown my demons in peace, would you.”

Steve smiles a little, cracked at the edges but holding the glow he’d always had, even during the war, and that he somehow managed to find again after _everything_. He raises a brow, giving Bucky a look. “You better believe it. Can’t have _Uncle Buck_ too drunk off his ass to babysit while Peggy and I made a break for it.”

Bucky laughs, ducking his head and trying to force back the sting in his eyes, the tightness in his throat. “I’m sorry,” he blurts out after a moment, voice a little shaky, “Steve. I’m sorry you didn’t- That even now, you _can’t_ \- _We_ can’t have- _**I** can’t_ -” Steve saves him by pulling him in and moving closer all at once, pressing his lips hard and firm to Bucky’s. Bucky makes a choked sound in the back of his throat, vision blurring the sight of Steve’s eyes squeezed shut, so close to his face.

Steve pulls back and looks at him, eyes as wet as Bucky’s feel, and reaches up with their joined hands to wipe away Bucky’s tears that spill over when he blinks. Steve shakes his head a little. “God, Buck, I love you,” he says, fierce and quiet enough for their ears alone, “And I’m _alright_. I’m _happy_ like this, with you. I don’t- I don’t need anything else. You know that.”

Bucky shakes his head, looking down at their hands. “But you _want_ more, and I can’t...I can’t give that to you. Neither of us can have it, with how we live, forget what we _are_. We can’t _raise_ a _kid_.”

“It’s fine,” Steve says on a rush of breath, capturing his lips again, and Bucky lets him, closing his eyes against that impossible life, letting Steve ground him, letting Steve help them both escape whatever _wants_ he doesn’t tell Bucky about, and that Bucky doesn’t tell him.

They break apart after a few minutes, kisses slowing, and just press their foreheads together, breathing in the tiny space between them. Steve smells like him and he smiles like Steve, and somewhere in it all is _cat_. He can’t help but laugh, and he feels Steve pull back, looks up to find Steve looking at him with a slightly raised brow and a small smile on his lips, confused but unable to stop smiling. Bucky just shakes his head. “Well, we technically _do_ have a kid,” he says, gesturing up a little with their hands.

Steve blinks before laughing with him, both going from quiet laughter to loud, as loud as the children they can both hear playing a ways away, chasing and laughing and loud and screaming and free like only children ever are.

“Speaking of,” Steve says after their laughter has started to die down, propping himself up on an elbow and looking at their companion. Bucky mirrors him, catching sight of Steve’s worried brow. “Does it seems like it’s put on some weight recently?”

\--

Bucky shifts on the bed three weeks later, eyes snapping open when he feels the space next to him empty but still warm and catches the smell of blood. He focuses on the sounds in the room, hears something slick, quiet, high pitched noises, _breath, **the prickle of eyes**_ -

He turns over to find Steve staring down at him from a foot away, eyes wide. Bucky sits up quickly. “Steve. What is it.”

Steve swallows and looks down. Bucky leans over and looks over the edge of the bed, eyes going wide when he sees-

“Buck…” Steve trails off, voice a little high, “Buck...Buck. Buck, _Buck, **Buck!**_ _What do we **do?!**_ ” he yells, voice shooting up almost an octave, the most panic Bucky’s heard from him since...probably since Steve broke Mr. Walker’s window on the first floor back in ‘38 trying to throw Bucky the shoe he’d dropped out the window by accident.

Bucky just bursts out laughing, falling on his back on the bed, one hand clutching his middle and hair a fanned out mess under his naked back.

 _“Bucky!_ ” Steve yells, “This is _serious! I don’t-! What do we-! **Help!**_ ”

Bucky tries to calm his laughter down, but one look at Steve’s panicked expression, looking like he’s just busted Old Man Walker’s window all over again, has him laughing again. He rolls over onto his right side and manages to block Steve’s halfhearted kick. “Okay, okay!” Bucky lets out between laughs after three more kicks, throwing the rest of the covers off and jumping out of bed.

He stares down at where Shadow’s just finished delivering its ( _her_. They never cared enough to check) second kitten, and is already working on a third. Bucky rushes over to their duffel bag. “Steve, our coats?” he asks.

Steve’s quick to comply, grabbing both of their coats off of the chair they’d thrown them over and meeting Bucky back at the side of the bed. “Here go our shirts,” Bucky says with a wild grin, pulling out all but one each and setting the duffel bag down as he gets on his knees and starts cleaning off the kittens with them. “Set the coats nearby and try and get some lukewarm water if you can,” he says while cleaning off the second, or at least soaking up most of the moisture, the sound of kitten mewls starting to fill the room. “Noisy little buggers,” he mumbles to himself, while Steve nods and actually _runs_  the short distance to the kitchen, enhanced speed and all.

Steve comes back with a large pot full of room temperature water a few minutes later and sets it down next to Bucky as he crouches at his side. Bucky dips the end of the tshirt he’s using in it and washes off some of what the shirt had soaked up before gently wiping down the kittens again.

“Are you sure you’re qualified to deliver anything?” Steve half jokes, voice still edged a little in panic.

Bucky looks over, giving him a lewd smirk. “Oh, I think I delivered a perfectly good blow job last night. But if you’re _questioning_ my abilities, I can leave you to your _hands_ -”

Steve shoves him in the shoulder, letting out a strangled sound when the kitten Bucky’s holding goes with him. Bucky laughs and regains his balance, setting the squirming kitten back down before reaching for another. “It’s fine, Steve,” he says, cleaning the head of the second. It’s got a white paw when he cleans its third leg off.

He glances over to see Steve staring at it, eyes still a little wide and wild but attention rapt, looking like he’s found one of the few wonders in the world. For all intents and purposes, he _has_. This is different from their normal lives, different from pain and death and nightmares. This is _life_.

Bucky glances down at the kitten before carefully offering it over to Steve, tshirt and all. “You wanna try?”

Steve’s eyes go wider as they look up at him, shaking his head quickly. “I don’t want-”

“You won’t hurt it,” Bucky reassures him gently, still holding the squirming, mewling bundle towards him.

Steve’s eyes drop back down to it, completely still for a few moments before he slowly reaches forward, taking the bundle from Bucky ( _very carefully_ ) and just as slowly pulling it in towards his chest, picking up the soaked end of the tshirt and just as carefully starting to clean it off.

Bucky goes back to cleaning the others.

\--

There’s five in total. They manage to maneuver Shadow around (with some already healing scratches gained in the process) just enough to get the shield and its straps cleaned off, and lay both of their coats down to make it a more comfortable nest for the kittens, who range from generally sleeping all at once to trying to explore the apartment (or at least as far as they currently _can_ ) in a scatter of tiny fur. Three are black like their mother (and end up with gold eyes and an adventurous streak). One is orange (and ends up with green eyes, and Bucky’s still trying to figure _that_ out).

The last is all black, except for a white paw (and ends up with eyes a lighter blue than Steve’s ma’s), and that’s the one Steve’s the most attached to.

Steve cleaned off two of them, lips curved up in the smallest, most child-like smile Bucky’d seen on him in _decades_ , but was reluctant to put the white pawed one down.

“I told you you wouldn’t hurt’em,” Bucky half whispers to him, both of them sitting shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip on the floor against the side of the bed, watching the kittens and Shadow sleep in Steve’s commandeered shield.

Steve smiles a little, that same smile he’s had on since he started cleaning them off, and nudges Bucky’s shoulder gently with his. “Yeah,” he half whispers back. Bucky smiles at him and Steve looks up, smiling back.

“You know what this means though, right?” Bucky asks after a few moments, eyeing the kittens thoughtfully.

Steve looks back up at him, brow furrowing a little. “What?”

Bucky grins, throwing his arms up over his head. “ _We’re grandparents!_ ” he yells to the world at large.

The kittens all wake with a start and start mewling, and Steve gives him a hard shove with his shoulder while he laughs. Shadow gives Bucky one of the dirtiest looks Bucky thinks he’s ever seen, and that’s saying something. It’s worth it though to get surrounded by wobbly balls of noisy fur.

He just grins back at it (her) before reaching over to pull Steve in by the back of his neck for a kiss, both of them smiling into it like it’s their first.

 

\--

“I think this was a bad idea,” Bucky says a week earlier, standing in front of the third mirror, reflection distorted into a short, bunched up wave, “I think I’m getting sea sick. Can you get sea sick in a Funhouse, Stevie?”

Steve just makes a strangled noise, and Bucky looks over to see him staring at where his reflection’s gone long, thin, and lanky, the whole thing half curved in some sort of swirl. “I don’t know,” Steve says, “But I don’t feel so good either, Buck.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Bucky says, grabbing Steve’s hand and quickly leading them both away, trying to keep down the hotdogs they had for lunch, because it would be _just their luck_ to end up losing them at a _fair_ (and without even going on the damn _roller coaster_ ).

He catches Shadow staring into a mirror that makes it look more like a panther than a regular cat, darting after them a second later.

He turns to look at Steve, who’s eyes shift from the cat to his, and they share a grin.

\--

“You don’t _have to, Buck_ -”

“Steve, just do it.”

“ _But_ -”

“ _Steve_.”

Steve blinks a week or so after the kittens are born, face scrunching up as Bucky throws an arm out dramatically where he’s laying on his side on their current apartment’s old, ratty couch, eyes going half lidded as he says, seriously, “Draw me like one of your French girls.”

Steve snorts, shaking his head, and Bucky laughs.

“I don’t _have_ any French girls,” Steve half mumbles, shifting slightly as he opens up his sketchbook to a new page, glancing down at the small object he feels bump into his foot. Steve glances down as the orange kitten darts off towards the kitchen and he smiles, looking back at the blank page. He’ll have to burn whatever he draws of Bucky if it has his face, arm, or scars later, but it’s fine, for now.

Bucky grunts, stretching out along the couch before getting settled. “You could,” he says, tone light, but Steve hears the underlying, “ _Like me_.”

Steve smiles a little, looking up at Bucky as he starts drawing. “I could,” he concedes, and Bucky’s eyes focus on his. It’s intimidating in a way he never appreciated before. Before the Avengers, before Hydra. It sends a shiver down Steve’s spine. “But I’m really fond of this jerk from Brooklyn who can never hold still for five seconds.”

Bucky frowns mock seriously, lips twitching. “He can to.”

“I’d like to see him try,” Steve counters, smirking a little.

Bucky grins, all teeth and a mischievous glint in his eyes. “Is that a _dare, Rogers?_ ”

“One blowjob says you can’t hold still for ten minutes straight,” Steve answers.

“You’re on,” Bucky smirks, settling back against the couch. One of the black kittens makes a swipe for the end strands of Bucky’s hair that are trailing down over the edge of it. “Easiest bet I’ll ever win.”

\--

Bucky ends up on his knees in front of the chair Steve’s been sat in for the last hour, mouth around Steve’s cock and Steve’s fingers smudging charcoal onto his skin, long bangs tickling the insides of Steve’s thighs.

Steve lets out a deep, throaty moan when Bucky swirls his tongue, gently drawing Bucky’s face in closer as he looks down. Bucky’s blue-gray eyes are closed and he has a hand down between his own legs, stroking himself inside his pants. A kitten tries climbing up Bucky’s ankle and Bucky shakes it off, not losing his rhythm.

The drawing’s on the floor to Steve’s right, next to Bucky’s left knee, half finished. Bucky only managed to hold still long enough for Steve to get out the first rough sketch.

Bucky shifts, left hand digging into Steve’s thigh and Steve’s eyes are drawn back to him, finding Bucky’s eyes staring up at his face. Steve slides his fingers up into Bucky’s long hair and tugs some of it half loose out of his ponytail. He gets lost in dark, blue-grey eyes, digging his fingers in and scratching his blunt nails across Bucky’s scalp as Bucky sucks.

Bucky stretches his back out a little, arching as he presses his head up a bit into Steve’s hand with a moan, eyelids fluttering for a moment.

Bucky still can’t hold still.

\--

“ _I bet you fifty he can drink you under the table_ ,” he hears Bucky say in Turkish at the table a few away from theirs, watches Bucky’s grin stretch his lips and finds that it’s real, all sharp and devious and handsome, the kind of smirk-smile he used to swindle the half drunk jerks at old bars out of their extra money, and to get into more than a few ladies’ skirts. Bucky heads back over to their table and plops back down into his seat, reaching for his beer while Steve takes a sip from his own.

“Five minutes?” Steve asks, even though they both know he heard.

“Five minutes,” Bucky confirms with a grin after pulling the bottle back, setting it on top of the table with a _thunk_.

Ten minutes later, Steve’s pretty sure he’s drunk his weight in alcohol, not that it’s affecting him any. The other guy is big, wobbling a little, and Steve pretends to do some of the same, pretends it affects him like it affects everyone else. He pretends his vision is blurry and makes himself fail twice before dragging the shot to himself across the table. It’s his turn.

He gets the liquid down with a fake cringe, feeling Bucky’s heat through their layers where he’s standing at Steve’s back.

The other guy tries to down his shot and fails, and the bar erupts into excitement at his loss.

Steve and Bucky both take the money and end up using it on dinner, another set of passports, tuna, and some new charcoal.

“You’re never going to run low,” Bucky had said, “Not while I’m around, Steven Grant Rogers.”

Steve had ducked his head a little, an old gesture in a new him, but his lips had curved up and he knew Bucky could tell, giving Steve’s hand a squeeze.

\--

When they get back, they’re swarmed by five rambunctious kittens. Shadow’s still laying on the shield, taking full advantage of the returned nest of their coats they made for it, and half of the bed sheets are pulled to the floor and shredded.

Still.

Bucky sets his bag on the table and crouches down with a grin, reaching out to pet each kitten and tell them about his and Steve’s day while Steve sets his own bag down next to his, shedding his new coat and draping it over the back of the closest chair.

Bucky’s cross legged on the floor when Steve turns to look, and reaches up with his right hand without looking to make grabby motions towards the bags.

Steve smiles a little and grabs two cans of tuna out of one, and moves to sit down opposite Bucky, tearing the cans open with his fingers and setting one down between them and the other to his left.

The kittens all flock to the one in the middle, and Steve gently butts the wandering orange one with a hand when it tries to eat out of the one he set aside, herding it towards the others just in time for Shadow to creep up next to him, already eating out of it when he glances over.

He runs his hand down along its (her. But he and Bucky both spent so long thinking of Shadow as neither it’ll probably never stick) back and looks up, finding Bucky smiling at him, big and wide and open, the shadows usually in his eyes at least half retreated away.

Steve smiles back, reaching forward to grab the side of Bucky’s neck as Bucky meets him in the middle for a kiss.

“I know it’s not a typical family,” Bucky says quietly after a moment, against his lips. Steve pulls back an inch to look at him.

Bucky looks back, eyes darting down between them for a moment before looking back up.

Steve smiles again, slow and warm, and Bucky gives him one back. “It’s perfect,” Steve says softly, leaning in to kiss him again. “This, here, with you,” Steve says against Bucky’s lips, “I’m happy, Buck. Just like this.”

Bucky stares into his eyes for a long moment, the corners slowly crinkling with his smile.

He leans in to kiss Steve and Steve will always meet him in the middle, both smiling against each other’s lips when a black kitten with a white paw tries to climb into Steve’s lap and an orange one swipes at Bucky’s hair.

 _No_ , Steve thinks, listening to Bucky’s breath and heartbeat in his ears mingling with five tiny kittens mewing, feeling a small, warm body next to his left leg and five more, tinier ones running around between his and Bucky’s legs, it’s not a typical family, but it’s theirs, and they’re happy.


End file.
